The Thing About Weres

October’s breeze breathed through them and they were gone.

I rolled and reached for Ralph. He swung his rapiers my way, ready to slit my wrists.

“Don’t even think about it.”

He retracted his blades and hopped on my palm. I snatched up my bag, abandoned my running shoes, and then I dove again, this time for the hole in the cedar hedge.

“Mystwalker.”

Had she really called me Mystwalker?

Chapter Four

The Hedi-sized gap in the line of cedar shrubs guarding the boneyard hadn’t been there in the spring, but after I’d realized it was faster to take the footpath along the ridge around the pond than use the public road to the Trowbridge land, I’d gone to the local Home Depot and liberated an electric hedger. Ralph and I blew through that aperture like a watermelon seed through wet, pursed lips.

The air eddied around me. Were-fragrant.

Casperella’s a Fae.

“You ready?” called Harry from the crest of the little hill. My second was tall, really tall, and would have stood out in a crowd even if he weren’t playing school monitor to a bunch of morphing Werewolves. Long, white, shoulder-length hair, hooded eyes. Slow to talk.

For instance, he could have said, “So, you couldn’t change into your wolf?”

But he didn’t.

Sweat glistened on his forehead. “I can hold off long enough to see you back to the trailer.”

I gave him a Starbucks smile. “Then who’d lead them on the run?”

“You’re right.” His forehead pleated as he lifted his brows in wry agreement. “Watch out, though. Some of the brethren have come for the Hunter moon run.” Harry’s voice grew muffled as he pulled off his denim shirt. “Their energy has changed the feel of the pack.”

Oh joy. Dog whines greeted me as I walked down the incline toward the wolves milling about in the green dip of flat field between one hill and the other. Most of those assembled turned at my approach. Some briefly, others whipping their heads back and forth between me, and the line of trees, with the same keyed-up excitement a dog displays for his leash and master. A few spared me so brief a glance, so indifferent, it almost bordered on a challenge. And some—the happy-go-lucky ones—occupied their time by either licking things they’d wish they hadn’t in the morning, or just standing, visibly trembling, their gaze everywhere except on me.

I didn’t need to stop and count to know I was way up on eyeballs.

Maybe eighty pairs of eyes swung in my direction as I came to a stop by Cordelia. There she was—the only white wolf in a huge patchwork gathering of buffs, grays, and browns. Untouched by them. Sitting distant, aloof. I resisted the urge to run my fingers through her white fur and maybe steal a little of her aplomb.

Concentrate, I told myself. Try to exude confidence. Or failing that, strive to look balanced and centered. Most importantly, ignore that which cannot be ignored: the presence of my personal Fae, now sitting bolt upright near my spine. Aware. Awake. Like she’d swallowed five cans of Red Bull without pausing to wipe her mouth.

Talk about lousy timing.

The Hunter moon is recognized as an opportunity for representatives of the smaller packs to join their Creemore brethren, so that they can socialize and put forward whatever petitions they feel need to be answered. But mostly they come to party and look for a mate. At the end of the last run of the change, they buy a couple of cases of Creemore Springs beer and head home the next day with a hangover and some happy memories.

But these visitors weren’t just coming to socialize. They were coming to see if all the back-fence talk were true. That the mate of the missing Alpha couldn’t actually change into her wolf. That she was round, and small, and young looking. That she didn’t have the right smell to her because she was part Fae.

They’d come to sniff out the truth.

Goddess, if they could smell my Fae …

Rumors had spread about me. I don’t know how. Within an hour of Ralph’s Great Lily Pad Rescue, Harry had suggested that I put a gag order on the pack. So, as the Alpha’s proxy, I’d banned any mention of our pack business or Trowbridge’s accession on all methods of communication—no phone calls, letters, e-mails, text messages, or forum messages. Not even a tweet. Nothing at all sent to the outside world about the interesting state of affairs of the Ontario pack.

But there are other ways of saying things without actually moving your lips, aren’t there? Raised eyebrows and expressive hands. Lips pursed when a certain question is posed. Some silences are more condemning than a crowd of chanting protestors.

Acceptance of Bridge’s rightful ascension—and as his mate, mine—wasn’t limited to the approval of the assembled pack. Weres have been in this realm for a long, long time. Long enough to form affiliations and associations. Long enough to breed that dreaded plague known as the political body. The hierarchy is simple. The wolves of North America fall under the aegis of the Council of North American Weres, who in turn genuflect to the Great Council of Weres.

As our immediate concern was the NAW, a letter had been carefully crafted to its leader, Reeve Whitlock, containing several carefully worded statements of fact.

Item one: Robson Trowbridge, once a rogue suspected of murdering his wife and family, had been exonerated by the truths revealed before the death of the last Alpha—his uncle Mannus Trowbridge. As is required by Pack Law, Robson Trowbridge’s right to the crown was undisputed, as several pack members were there to witness his Alpha-flare and the subsequent flare from his chosen mate. (See attached witness statements by Cordelia LaRue, Harry Windcombe, and Russell Biggs).

Item two: Robson Trowbridge is recuperating from severe wounds inflicted on him during the ascension. His mate is acting in his stead until such time as he is ready to resume his duties.

This letter, the placement of each comma and period argued at length over our dinette table, was a fluid piece of chicanery, because the devil was in the things not said. No mention of the mating deception, no hint of my Fae blood. Not a peep to indicate that Bridge’s recovery was taking place in a freakin’ different realm. Nothing whatsoever revealed that could connect me to the person who actually killed the old Alpha.

Under normal conditions, sending an “everything’s fine over here” letter would have been a joke. The NAW would have sent someone up here posthaste to do their own investigation, and very likely our heads would have ended up on a pike beside Mannus’s. What saved us was the fact that Reeve Whitlock was in a pissing contest with the Great Council.

No one outside of the inner circle knew exactly what the issue was, though the common consensus was that it was far more significant than the usual snarlfests about territory disputes or implied disrespect. Harry had tried to winkle out the facts from his sources, but all he’d been able to unearth was the rumor that the Great Council had hired forensic accountants to study the NAW’s coffers.

Oooh, death by audit. Scary.

Whatever, Whitlock’s problems had been a bonus for us. We’d been given a rubber-stamp approval for the change in leadership—at least for the interim. “But when they come, there won’t be any long-drawn-out inquiry,” Harry had said back in May. “If the Council’s investigator thinks the line of ascension was in any way shady…”

And, oh Goddess, had it been twisted.

Without the full help of the pack we’ll never be able to pull the wool over the Council’s eyes, when they come to investigate. Now, a thread of dread tightened around me. Even I couldn’t ignore the obvious. I may have taped the pack members’ mouths shut and rapped their texting fingers, but that cloak of silence was becoming as threadbare as Cordelia’s favorite housecoat.

Harry was right. If the pack energy had been a visible aura it would have been a purple cloud of something